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6

“I wended my way to the graveyard this evening,” wrote Anne to Gilbert after she got home. “I think ‘wend your way’ is a lovely phrase and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did. Miss Courtaloe’s stories were so funny. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can’t believe they really did. Somebody has said that ‘hate is only love that has missed its way.’

I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other . . . just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you . . . and I think death would show it to them. I’m glad I found out in life. And I have found out there are some decent Pringles . . . dead ones.

“Last night when I went down late for a drink of water I found Aunt Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry. She asked me not to tell Chatty . . . she would think it so silly. I promised I wouldn’t.

“Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty well over her bronchitis. I wonder they let her, especially since old Mrs. Campbell is a Pringle.

Last Saturday night Elizabeth . . . she was Betty that night I think . . . ran in singing when she left me and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch door, ‘It’s too near the Sabbath for you to be singing that song.’ I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any day if she could!

“Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine color . . . they do dress her nicely . . . and she said wistfully, ‘I thought I looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished father could see me. Of course he will see me in Tomorrow . . . but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.’

“Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises. Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my ‘literary efforts.’ The specter that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can’t do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then . . . oh, what would the Pringles say then!

“Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor broken-hearted, illused Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew’s foot in the pantry the other day and she has fumed ever since. ‘That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep and let mice overrun everything. This is the last straw.’ So she chivies him from pillar44 to post, routs him off his favorite cushion and . . . I know, for I caught her at it . . . assists him none too gently with her foot when she lets him out.”